Upcoming training. Events. Publications. Newsletter. Discounts.

Kenwood Center Presenters, Books and Video Workshops On Demand

The Kenwood Center has been fortunate to host many incredible presenters over the years. We do our best to ensure all new workshop content is recorded and produced as reliably and beautifully as possible to honor the work of our presenters and workshop participants.

David Epston, CQSW

David Epston, CQSW, lives in Auckland, New Zealand, and is considered the co-founder,
with his late colleague, Michael White (who passed away in 2008), of what has come to be
known as Narrative Therapy, a major approach in marriage and family therapy, counseling,
pastoral counseling, and other disciplines.

In the late 1970s David and Michael led the flowering of family therapy within Australia and New Zealand. Together they started developing their ideas, continuing throughout the 1980s,
and eventually in 1990 published Narrative Means to Therapeutic Ends, the first major text in what came to be known as narrative therapy. In 1997 following the publication of Playful Approaches to Serious Problems, Epston, along with his co-authors Dean Lobovits and Jennifer Freeman, initiated the website www.NarrativeApproaches.com. The website
included the publication of a series of authored and co-authored papers, artwork, and poetry in the form of an “Archive of Resistance: Anti-Anorexia/Anti-Bulimia.”

Epston was awarded an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters (D.Litt.) in 1996 by the Graduate School of Professional Psychology, John F. Kennedy University, in Orinda, California, and the Special Award for Distinguished Contributions to Family Therapy from the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Family Therapy Videos.

Dosho Mike Port

Dosho Port has been practicing Zen since 1977 and received dharma transmission from Dainin Katagiri Roshi when he was thirty-three years old in 1989. He then embarked on an “intermittent pilgrimage” while teaching Zen, working as an education administrator, and raising two children, studying with more than twenty Zen teachers in Japan, the US, and Europe. Recently, Dosho completed koan introspection with James Ford, Melissa Blacker, and David Rynick of Boundless Way Zen.

Todd May, PhD

Todd May, PhD, is Class of 1941 Memorial Professor of the Humanities at Clemson University where he has been teaching for 23 years. He is the author of many books on contemporary philosophy, and is a leading scholar of the work of Foucault, Deleuze, and Rancière. Todd is also a contributor to The New York Times philosophy section called The Stone. He has given symposia and workshops to groups working within the narrative tradition in Denmark, France, and England. Todd has also devoted his time to grassroots organizing, working for various human rights issues, trekking in the Sahara and dog mushing in the Arctic.

Chené Swart, PhD

Chené Swart is an author, speaker and consultant at Transformations, a consulting company that provides services to small, medium and large businesses, communities, and educational institutions in South Africa, the USA, Canada and the Bahamas. The company has been providing leadership development, training, diversity journeys, coaching, research, facilitation and consulting services to a diverse range of clients. Chené teaches Narrative leadership practices as part of the Post Graduate Diploma in Leadership at the University of Stellenbosch Business School and lectures on Narrative coaching in the Advanced Course in Personal and Corporate Coaching at the University of Pretoria, South Africa. Chené was a featured speaker on Narrative Organizational Practices at the international conference on Narrative Therapy in Vancouver, Canada in May, 2012. Chené’s book, Re-authoring the World: The Narrative Lens and Practices for Organizations, Communities and Individuals, was published by Knowres Publishing in September 2013.